Imperial Japan's sexual enslavement of Korean women is an undeniable historical fact, the foreign ministry said Thursday, as South Korea is reviewing ways to appease South Korean victims of the wartime atrocity.

"As many previous studies and the Japanese government-issued Kono Statement found, the (imperial) Japanese army's comfort women issue is an undeniable historical fact," ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said in a press briefing.

The comment was in response to Prof. Hosaka Yuji's release of new evidence attesting to the Japanese government's role in the mobilization of Asian women during World War II, when the Korean Peninsula was under colonial control of Japan.

The naturalized Korean professor of Japanese ancestry at the Dokdo Research Institute of Sejong University released a Korean translation of Japanese government documents, which he said show the Japanese interior and foreign ministries played a role in the sexual enslavement.

The professor said the Japanese government should hold itself responsible for the wartime issue. 

Currently, South Korea's foreign ministry task force is revisiting a 2015 deal South Korea and Japan signed to settle longtime bilateral issues stemming from the historical issue. The deal was signed under the previous administration of South Korea and the Moon Jae-in government has denounced it as lacking support from so-called comfort women victims.

"Our government's position on the comfort women issue will be defined on the basis of the result of the ongoing review by the task force," the spokesman said. (Yonhap)